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Contents

Early life

Nicholas was born in Detroit to Louise Carolyn and Otto Nicholas.[1] She spent her early years in Detroit. With the remarriage of her mother to Robert Burgen, she moved to Milan, Michigan, a small town south of Ann Arbor.

At the age of 16, she appeared on the August 25, 1960, cover of Jet magazine as a future school teacher prospect at the National High School Institute at Northwestern University.[2] She graduated from Milan High School in 1961. Nicholas is the middle child of three, with an older brother, Otto, and a younger sister, Michele, who was murdered in 1980.[3]

Career

Nicholas began her television acting career in 1968, with an episode of It Takes a Thief.

Nicholas had three consecutive (1970-72) Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress in a Drama TV Series, for her role as Liz McIntyre on the ABCcomedy-drama series Room 222. Following Room 222 (1969–74), she won two Image Awards in 1976 for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture and Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series, for her role as Beth Foster in Let's Do It Again (1975).[5]

She later appeared as Harriet DeLong in the cast of NBC/CBS' In the Heat of the Night (1989–95). Nicholas wrote six episodes of the series, beginning her second career as a writer. When that show was cancelled, she enrolled in the Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California, eventually finding her way to the Journeymen's Writing Workshop under the tutelage of author Janet Fitch. She worked with Fitch for five years. Nicholas also attended the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Workshop, and the Natalie Goldberg Workshop, in Taos, New Mexico.

Brown University commissioned Nicholas to write a staged adaptation of Freshwater Road, which was presented in May 2008.

Personal life

At 19, Nicholas dropped out of the University of Michigan and signed up with the Free Southern Theater in New Orleans, headed by Gilbert Moses, whom she married in 1964.[6]

Nicholas married soul singer-songwriter Bill Withers on January 13, 1973.[7][8] Their relationship had been tempestuous prior to their nuptials. In November 1972, Nicholas reported to authorities that Withers flew to Tuscon, Arizona where she was filming The Soul of Nigger Charley, and beat her in her motel room after she threatened to end their relationship over the telephone, but she refused to press charges.[9] The couple divorced in 1974.[7]

In February 1980, Nicholas's younger sister Michele Burgen, a 26-year-old editor for Ebony magazine was shot to death. Her body was found in a locked rental car at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. Nicholas and her older brother, Otto searched the country for clues, but no suspect was ever taken to trial.[3]

While coping with the loss of her sister, Nicholas met CBS sports anchor Jim Hill at a Sacramento poetry reading in June 1980.[3] They married on Valentine's Day in 1981. The couple separated in October 1981 and she filed for divorce,[10] before reconciling soon after.[11] Nicholas filed for divorce the final time in 1984.[3]